Post-game notes, quotes

The Rangers were defeated by the St. Louis Blues, 2-0, tonight at Madison Square Garden, and are now 7-6-1 overall, including a 2-4-1 mark at home.

The Blueshirts were credited with a season-high, 40 hits in the contest, led by Ryan Callahan, Brandon Prust and Sean Avery who each registered a game-high, six hits. New York now leads the league in average hits, tallying 28.3 per game.

In addition to his six hits, Sean Avery tied the Rangers’ season-high with seven shots on goal in 15:15 of ice time. Ryan Callahan was credited with seven shots on Oct. 29 vs. Carolina. The seven shots tied Avery’s career-high, having registered seven shots on Dec. 14, 2009 vs. Atlanta.

Michal Rozsival registered four blocked shots and logged 21:23 of ice time. He now ranks second on the team and tied for 19th in the league with 30 blocked shots.

Martin Biron turned aside 20 of 21 shots, including all 14 shots he faced in the first period, to capture Third Star honors. Biron is now 45-44-4-5 with a 2.50 goals against average, .912 save percentage and seven shutouts in 107 career regular season appearances vs. Western Conference opponents.

Brandon Prust was credited with two blocked shots to go along with his six hits, and registered his sixth fighting major of the season. He is tied for second in the NHL with six fighting majors on the season.

Dan Girardi logged a team-high, 25:03 of ice time and registered four hits and two blocked shots in the contest.

In addition to his six hits, Ryan Callahan registered four shots and logged 19:00 of ice time in his return to the lineup after missing Friday’s 3-0 win at New Jersey due to injury.

The Rangers’ penalty kill held the Blues scoreless in four power play attempts (8:00), and have not surrendered a goal in their last two contests (6-6, 11:49).

The Blueshirts’ practice schedule for tomorrow, November 8, is 12:00 p.m. at the MSG Training Center.

The Rangers will continue their longest homestand of the season when they face-off against the Washington Capitals on Tuesday, Nov. 9, at Madison Square Garden (7:30 p.m.). The game will be televised live on Versus, and can be heard on 970 The Apple.

POST-GAME QUOTESJohn Tortorella on tonight’s game… “This is how they win. They defended pretty well. We are going to keep working at it. For us to develop offense we have to win battles. I don’t think a lot of our offense is going to come off rushes. We are going to take opportunities when we can but they defended pretty well and we didn’t get enough good looks. The past few games we have struggled as far as putting shots on there. We can’t look for something better.Brandon Dubinsky on generating shots… “I think sometimes shots are misleading a little bit. Sometimes you can have quality versus quantity and vice versa. I don’t think that’s something we think about too much. I think we focus on scoring chances and whether or not we’re getting them. Certainly tonight I don’t think we got enough scoring chances to put ourselves in a position to win. Like I said before, we have to make sure we come out for a full 60 minutes here at home and make this a tough building to play in.”Ryan Callahan on the five minute power play in the third period… “We had a couple of chances but not enough. We knew they were going to be aggressive on their penalty kill and we just didn’t match it.”

Nessier – Call it whatever you like. I just call it standing by my team.

I absolutely DO NOT advocate Booger or anyone else taking away any minutes of our 5 minute PP today by committing a penalty.

What I am suggesting is doing something in advance in order to deter others in the future from hurting our players, a la the injury to Callahan the other night.

First minute of the game, Booger comes out and takes a flying run right at a Marty Brodeur or a Halak. Then, Booger comes out after the game and says exactly the following to the media: “That is what will happen to every single goalie if any opposing player dares to hurt our guys.” A simple 2 minute penalty in the first 5 minutes of a game. Hardly throwing a game away, IMO.

If the role of enforcer is to fight the other team’s goon, then I dont find that to be the least bit useful.

lol Tiki – if Boogey started doing that he’d be suspended and fined, and we’d have to be ready to lose momentum and possibly give up a goal early in the game. No enforcer does that, and for good reason.

According to “The Code”, which is a book about fighting in hockey and which was partially inspired by Boogaard’s success in Minnesota, there’s a lot more to a goon fighting a goon than meets to eye. According to the book, which is full of quotes from players, it would go something like this: Avery slashes Komiserek. Colton Orr says to Komiserek “don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” Then Boogaard says to Orr “if you have a problem, I’m here.” Then Boogaard and Orr fight what appears to us to be a meaningless fight. But what the fight says to Avery is that he can play his game and not have to worry about someone like Orr coming after him. And (again, according to the book), players know this is how it is and no one wants to see their teammate get beat up. So if Boogaard loses, in theory it’ll make Avery behave himself more. And if Boogaard wins, then it’ll make Avery feel safe to play his game. Maybe that’s just blown up for the sake of an interesting book, but the point is there is at least a chance that there’s more to a goon fighting another goon than meets the eye, and there is some benefit to having a goon who can win fights.

lol Nessier! Im just tired of seeing our players get treated like rag dolls, including our franchise goaltender. I want to see consequences doled out, and want other teams to receive a message.

How about Boogaard not doing anything within the game, just coming out in the media and making a the following simple statement:

“I only give others what they ask for. If my goalie ever gets run and I deem it to be intentional, I will take your goalie out and go after your star with reckless abandon. I dont care about money, I care about backing up my team, and I will sacrifice fines and suspension to protect them.”

I agree with you Tiki – it is frustrating. But we’ll have to wait for another Orr-Fedoruk moment and then we can both rejoice in the message sent. Until then, we’ll have to try to take some sort of pride in knowing that our goon is bigger and tougher than the other goon, and hope we can make teams pay for taking 5 minute majors on the scoreboard.

Tim, if Boogaard did that and then said that, he would get suspended and fined. That’s akin to a pitcher coming out and admitting he threw at a batter. The league’s HATE when players admit to that kind of stuff.

umm…biron had a good game…..avery had a better game again (last two had been a bit flat IMHO) and threw some good hits….. Prust Boyle Avery need to get more PP time….EC and whom ever need to get less…..We should have worn them down…torts needs to roll d pairings and lines better or some of our important guys will be out of gas by the spring……I think crombeen held up and that could have been much worse for step….way tired of rozy, bring up vtank!!!!

i was dreaming that Rangers won the Cup and for some reason i felt like i was the only one who knew about it so i wanted to share it with you guys here on RR! I ran to my computer and typed the address of the page but i couldn’t get to it… i would type the name right but something different would always come up! I was trying and trying and couldn’t get to the site to tell you about the good news! And then when i finally got to the page i WOKE UP! WTB??

and now I’m starving! I’m gonna take a ride to Burger King on Coney Island and avenue U!

When HYR first signed Boogaard, I thought it was a good idea. The NYR were a really soft team. Carcillo-Gaborik would never happen again. Then, I made the mistake of watching Boogard highlights (lowlights) on youtube. . . .

Derek Boogaard is the worst player to ever play in the NHL. Ever. Rich Pilon cringes every time he watches Boogaard. Torts cant even attach jumper cables to the two bolts in Boogaard’s neck, because no amount of energy is gonna make up for his lack of hockey skill. He can’t keep up with the speed of the game, therefore he can’t make the hits neccesary to change the momentum of games. Every hit he makes is borderline late (penalty).

Sather really blew it with the Boogy deal. Find one more Brandon Prust, and eat Boogy’s contract. He is useless.